Beta-in-a-Box: Prefinery Brings More Services for Pre-Launch Startups

Written by Jolie O'Dell / August 31, 2009 11:18 PM / 5 Comments

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is a resource and guide for first-time entrepreneurs and startups. The channel is sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. To sign up for BizSpark, click here.

Much like competitor LaunchSet, startup support system Prefinery offers beta management software, allowing time-pressed entrepreneurs to buy rather than build these critical systems without reinventing the wheel.

A company rep contacted us to tout the service's "feature set that lets entrepreneurs and technologists focus on building a great product, especially, as we all know, because these kinds of capabilities are always a last-minute thing, and messily handled."

"But to be very clear, and it is very important to convey this," the rep said, "a startup's first touchpoints with users are incredibly important - these are your alpha users, your biggest fans and evangelists, and your superusers-to-be, and also, press, analysts, investors, etc. - all incredibly high-value people. The stakes are high, and you want to use a kick-butt system for all of these initial touches."

Currently, Prefinery can be used to create a splash page for the product, generate flexible signup forms, create event-based automatic email messages, manage a queue of beta testers, generate invite codes, and export the list of leads to CRM systems.

To see the front end in action, check out the below screenshots from Swingly and Badgr.

Also, take a peek under the hood at what startup teams will see:

The company has also based its roadmap on the concept of perpetual beta - that, no matter the label of the product version, companies will always be testing and improving sites, apps, and metrics.

Moreover, once the project reaches scale, Prefinery imagines it will become "a broker of the beta ecosystem, between companies/products and prospective users and superusers - and think about the kind of data they'll have."

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Comments

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Interesting. I'm just not sure that setting up the process in a 3rd party system is easier than building it yourself. It's not terribly complex from a coding standpoint. Would have to try it to see if the pre-built tools make-up for the fact that we'd have less control. Not sure I'm compelled to offload it.

Sure, it's usually a last minute issue, doesn't mean it can't be done right.

Looking forward to thoughts from others, or those who have used something like it so I can decide if it's worth pursuing. Thanks for the article Jolie!

Justyn

Posted by: Justyn | August 31, 2009 11:43 PM

we'll definitely consider prefinery and launchset (and any others we can find) when we're ready to publicize the sparcq beta. any plans to do a comparison in a future rww article?

Posted by: Umair Mufti | September 1, 2009 12:30 AM

The main problem is not in setting up and managing a beta for your new web service.
The main issue is to spread the news and find beta testers. If you are located in the Bay Area and get into contact with TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Venture Beat, GigaOM then you will have Beta testers. However if you are located outside this micro cosmos the chances of getting any interest from these websites is near to zero.

Posted by: LEADSExplorer.com | September 1, 2009 1:25 AM

I think this is a good idea for established companies. For startups, I want to see originality - proof to me (Angel) that you know the process. Agreed, it's quicker, but is quicker better? This add another cost to the game, many of these form / code can be easily develop or readily available online for free. Another way for this is to hire interns from colleges - it's cheap and may be free.

Posted by: DemoPit.com | September 1, 2009 9:07 AM

I find the idea behind Prefinery and Launchset awesome. Especially with advanced features for keeping track of your beta users and their feedbacks. It may be relatively easy to build something to open your site to beta testers, but organizing feedbacks and everything is more time consuming. I agree with the company rep that it is a critical phase for a site. It better be well managed.

I am close to beta testing my site. I will sure give a try at Prefinery as my registration on Launchset is pending for quite some time now...

So, to answer your question, yes, I will definitely use one of those services.

Posted by: Frédérick Brault | September 1, 2009 9:38 AM